Best Offline Voice Assistant for Android

When you want an extra pair of hands at home or in the office, an offline voice assistant can be just want you’ve been looking for. With voice-activated help becoming ever more popular, how can you find the right match for you? Here’s what I consider to be five of the best available on Google Play to get you started.

5 Android Offline Voice Assistants – My Choices

Before you start to read, I should tell you the apps below are not organized in order of usefulness, design, features, etc. Instead, I’m just going to tell you what I thought of each one individually, based on their merits.

AiDelight: The offline voice assistant that can control WiFi

So, something I really enjoyed about AiDelight is how well it integrates with my existing music library. Being able to access my library with a quick command is something I make a lot of use of when I’m working in the office, or working up a sweat in the gym. The Google Everything functionality is quick and easy to use which is nice, but it’s the way it integrates with my phone’s core functionality that I think will most impress you.

By being able to turn WiFi and Bluetooth on or off you can save a few wasted seconds of scrolling through your settings menu. This is the real benefit of an offline voice assistant for me because it makes life that little bit easier.

Saiy: The assistant that allows you to create custom phrases

Something that can limit an offline voice assistant is the fact that you’re often constrained to the same set phrases for each operation. For those of you who want their assistant to, instantly, start working with you, then I suggest Saiy. The most potent feature it has is the ability to assign any phrase you want in place of the default phrasing. That allows you to personalize things and develop a real one-to-one dialogue and working relationship.

The degree of integration with other apps is also impressive. By linking with all the big social networks, and Amazon’s Alexa, it allows you to make Saiy a central part of your digital life. If you’re the type of person, who wants just to follow the defaults the crowd use then this isn’t for you. Get creative, have fun with it, and you’ll get far more out of it!

Lyra: The opinionated assistant

I like to think of all those Apple fans who love Siri getting the shock of their lives when they meet Lyra. She’s the assistant who’s not afraid to let her voice be, heard. Sure she can do all the same smart stuff as the rest of them. Such as, schedule appointments, send an email, read a text, remind you of a birthday, but she does it all with sass and style.

If you want more than a phone that mumbles a few words at you as you strain to hear it, then Lyra is well worth meeting. She’ll liven up even the most mundane of tasks and is tailor-made for those of you who love to use their tech with a smile.

Once you download her, I strongly suggest you ask her if she’s better than Siri? Her response is guaranteed to warm your Android-loving heart!

If you like the idea of an assistant with attitude, check Lyra out on Google Play, here.

Bestee: The assistant that boosts your productivity

Bestee markets itself as the instant assistant because it even works offline. While that’s certainly impressive, it’s not enough to make it stand out on this list!

However, what is impressive, is its voice dictation. It seems to have a higher level of recognition than the other assistants that I’ve used which is very impressive, to say the least. That means that when you want to send a quick WhatsApp message to your group, you don’t have to enunciate every single world; which is ideal for keeping the conversation flowing naturally.

One area I found it slightly lacking in is the customization options. While you can change colors and choose from a limited number of accents, you can’t add phrase shortcuts. And that is disappointing because others this list do offer that. It’s a great little app, but if you want something that’s totally next level? Then you may want to look around a little bit longer. It’s great for what it does though!

Smart Voice Assistant: It contains ads, but it gets things done

With a name like that, how could it not make it into my top 5?

Smart Voice Assistant is a no thrills somewhat standardish app which allows you to speed up your texting, emailing and scheduling. If you want something that will work in the office, then this is a solid choice.

You won’t be getting a great deal of the customizable functionality offered by some of the other assistants out there. But if you want something that will get the job done with minimal fuss then why not give it a go?

You may well find the ads get annoying after a while though. So if you use it a lot for dictation and messaging, then that’s something you’ll have to get used to. App support is impressive, and the developers look to be in it for the long haul. I think that’s nice as it will undoubtedly lead to updated functionality in the future.

About the author

Darren Wall

Darren hails from the UK, is a lover of all things mobile technology and likes to write about it all of the time. He's been writing for his own mobile tech blog and various others for over 13-years and cannot foresee a day in which he will become tired of doing so.

2 Comments

Each of these look like a load of cr(uft) that puts in WAY more than I’d need. All I need to do is replace the functionality I had in my OLD Motorola phone where I could press the button on my BT headset, tell it to “call ” and it would do that, without having to load a bloatload of unwanted code, and without requiring me to set up a Google account and leave mobile data permanently on (I leave mobile data off for 99.999999% of the time)

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